Crouton

I'm 8, the summer before I turn 9. We've just moved from Nelson to Castlegar, into the house my dad built on Southridge Drive, and I feel like a big deal - because I've been helping with the construction. As a break, and a treat, we're planning on some hiking/fishing trip somewhere with Dad's friends. So my dad brings me along in our old yellow-and-white GMC pickup truck, we meet up with a bunch of old (mostly over 30, leastways) guys.

It's all guys, and there's a tangible sense of camaraderie in the ether. They're all being incredibly mean and cruel to each other verbally, but it is all met with hearty guffaws and wide grins. It just seems innately... right. They're like a wolf pack, and it feels like an honour to be among them.

Except, of course, I'm painfully shy. Even at the time, I'm certain I wouldn't have been able to tell you anybody's eye colour. So I'm just listening - soaking in the coarse exchanges of adult men unconstrained by dithering worries of appropriateness. But that couldn't last, could it.

One of the unfamiliar fellows addresses me directly with a drawling well-meaning tone, and asks, "What's your name again, kiddo?"

I mumble my name. I can hear it sort of choked off - I started saying "Clayton", but too late tried to shorten it to the easier-to-remember "Clay" - turning it into a swallowed jumble of mumble like "Claymnn".

"What?"

I tried again. Choosing to stick with my preferred form, even though I can't say it clearly myself when I think about it too hard. "Clæt'n".

"Clinton?"

Most of the local cluster of the fellows are all watching and listening now, and I feel myself panic and get a bit angry simultaneously. I over-compensate, naturally. "CLAY-TON" I don't yell, but I definitely over-emphasized.

The guy bursts into laughter. I have no idea why, until an moment later when he can say, "That sounded like 'CROU-TON' - HA HA HA!"

They all bust up laughing. I really really really tried to go with it, and laugh along. But I bet that my snickering wasn't nearly convincing enough to cover up for my intense blushing.

Ronnie, dad's best friend, laughed longest and hardest. It was just hilarious somehow for him. Over the subsequent decade of hanging out with Ronnie I had to get used to being referred to as "Crouton", and on his insistence on spreading the moniker to everyone we knew mutually. For the rest of my existence in the Valhalla society, I was Crouton to one and all. I knew all along that it was meant as a friendly jibe, and so bore it as well as I could. Which, as a kid and later as a teenager, probably wasn't all that well, really.

Dad never called me Crouton, though. While he never protected me from the mockery, he quite decidedly managed to always address me in a way that made me feel respected - even when he was teasing. There's really something to that; to knowing how to convey the jocular without violating the underlying respect. I sure as hell can't do it reliably.

Nowadays, whenever somebody mispronounces my name, I just go with it. It's easier that way.